She is more than a friend. [parse]
She is more than a friend.
As I understand, "more than a friend" is a constituent. The dependent "than a friend" is a prepositional phrase. The head "more" is a pronoun. Am I right? Thanks!
Top answer
He is more than a friend. You are right that "more than a friend" is a constituent, a complement of "is" to be precise. Ordinarily, the determinative "more" functions as a fused determiner-head with the than phrase functioning as its complement.
- He is more than a friend.
- You are right that "more than a friend" is a constituent, a complement of "is" to be precise.
- Ordinarily, the determinative "more" functions as a fused determiner-head with the than phrase functioning as its complement.
- Since the single word "more" serves as both head and determiner, I can easily see why you would think it was a pronoun, especially as some dictionaries and basic grammar books call it a pronoun, I believe.
- But in your example, I'm inclined to say that "more than" is best analysed as an idiom, where "than" merges syntactically with "more" to form a modifier of the item following "than".
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He is more than a friend.
You are right that "more than a friend" is a constituent, a complement of "is" to be precise.
Ordinarily, the determinative "more" functions as a fused determiner-head with the than phrase functioning as its complement. Since the single word "more" serves as both head and determiner, I can easily see why you would think it was a pronoun, espe
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